Translate

Monday, August 26, 2013

We must prepare for calamity in Afghanistan

The failed attack on the Indian
consulate in Jalalabad last Saturday, and the conspiracy to attack the
Indian ambassador in Afghanistan, reported in Mail Today the day before
that, are indications that we need to plan for the worsening scenario in
Afghanistan, rather than for an optimistic one.
Ever since it was known that the US and its allies would withdraw their
combat troops from the country by 2014, speculation about Afghanistan's
future has veered from the optimistic to the catastrophic.

Attacks

There are reports that the Afghan elite are voting with their feet and
leaving the country in large numbers. However, for the bulk of the
people that is not an option, and so they are hunkering down for what
could be a turbulent period that could see near civil war conditions and
a great deal of more bloodshed. Already,
the brunt of the violence is being borne by the Afghan National
Security Forces who are losing personnel at the rate of over 400 per
month.

Grim: An Afghan Army soldier shows a diffused
bomb used at the scene of a suicide bomb attack on the Indian consulate
in Jalalabad, Afghanistan

Formally, Islamabad condemned
the attack on the Indian consulate. Its foreign office spokesman, Aizaz
Chaudhry, expressed the condemnation declaring that "collective
endeavours would help effectively combat this scourge [terrorism]." But
most people in India believe that the Pakistan's powerful
Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) was fully involved in the
suicide attack that took the lives of 12 Afghan nationals, most of them
children studying in a local madarsa. The
Mail Today report was more specific. It spoke of intercepts that
indicated that the ISI had given a 'supari' of Rs 5 lakhs to the Haqqani
network for the life of the Indian ambassador Amar Sinha. Remember, the
ISI and the Haqqani network were involved in the devastating July 2008
and October 2009 attacks on the Indian embassy in Kabul.

In 2008, a car bomb killed 58
persons, including the Indian military adviser at the embassy and the
2009 attack by a suicide bomber led to 17 deaths. In the case of the
2008 attack, the US took the unprecedented step of publicly pointing to
the complicity of the ISI and the Haqqani network. The
aim of the ISI at that time was to try and contain India's rising
influence in Afghanistan, based on its successful development
programmes. However, New Delhi did not back off and instead strengthened
its security systems and continued with projects, which have been
acclaimed by the aid community. At
the time, Pakistan also conducted a shrill campaign against the Indian
consulates in the country, alleging that they were being used to aid
militants operating in Pakistan. However, these claims were firmly
rejected by all unbiased observers, including the US and NATO officials
who would have certainly known better.

Strategy

But the context of the current attacks is different. They come at a
time when details of the US withdrawal are sketchy and Pakistan has
resumed its central role in the American calculations by emerging as the
principal facilitator of the dialogue between the US and the Taliban. The
attacks are a signal that Islamabad is going for its maximalist goal in
the country - to establish a post 2014 political order which will
remove all traces of Indian influence in Afghanistan. Ostensibly,
Islamabad claims that it is merely a facilitator of a regional effort
to contain the Afghan problem and promote reconciliation in the country.
To this end, it has engaged the US in dialogue and permitted key
Taliban personalities to participate in the Doha process. But it is also
clearly underscoring the price of its endeavours - the driver's seat in
the post-2014 situation.

A great deal of the outcome of
this power play depends on Islamabad and Washington DC. American
signals have been mixed. On one hand, they have been indicating that
they are desperate to get out of Afghanistan and will play along with
Islamabad's goals. In
his visit to Islamabad last week, US Secretary of State John Kerry
reportedly told his Pakistani interlocutors that the US was not going to
leave Afghanistan in a hurry and that the US was hoping that it could
sign an agreement with the Karzai government about the size and nature
of the residual forces that would remain after 2014.

Power

US Secretary of State John Kerry reportedly told Pakistan that the US is not going to leave Afghanistan in a hurry

So far the US has dithered in
providing a clear figure relating to the size of its residual forces.
Various numbers have been thrown around, from 22,000 to 15,000 and even
the "zero" option, but there has been no official communication.
If the US wants to live up to its goal of leaving a stable and peaceful
Afghanistan after its military campaign, it needs to spell out some of
these numbers now, along with details of the ways in which it will
support the ANSF and the Afghan state. Only this would provide an
incentive for Islamabad to behave well. Any
indication that the Americans were desperate to leave would encourage
the hawks of the ISI to step up their actions, as they have been doing. Like
it or not, India's future in Afghanistan is linked to that of the
American camp. Our successful development efforts there functioned under
the larger US-NATO security umbrella. Geography prevents us from
playing the kind of role that Pakistan, or for that matter Iran and
Russia can play in the country. And India does not have the kind of
money that China has to bankroll its influence across the country,
should it choose to do things that way. In
the short run, then, Indian policy has to push the United States to
spell out its post 2014 commitments, as well as pursue an active role in
regional efforts to shore up the Afghan government. This may or may not
involve the idea of a reconciliation of the present Afghan government
with the Taliban. This
project, in any case, does not look too viable. The Taliban's behaviour
in Doha, where they sought to project themselves as the Afghan Emirate,
is a signal that they have learnt nothing and forgotten nothing. Mail Today August 5 2013